The Young Turks - Independents Dump Trump - April 16, 2025

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Attorney General Says Mistakenly Deported Man Is “Not Coming Back to Our Country.” Elite Pentagon Unit Resigns En Masse After Clash With DOGE. Trump Hits Record Low Approval Among Independents. U.S. Economy to Lose Billions as Foreign Tourists Stay Away. Hosts: Yasmin Khan & Wosny Lambre SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE ☞  https://www.youtube.com/@TheYoungTurks FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK  ☞   https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER  ☞       https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM  ☞  https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK  ☞          https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕MERCH  ☞      https:/www.shoptyt.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hello, everyone and welcome to the Young Turks. I'm your host, Yasmin Khan, and I'm here with Wozny Lambray, but you all know Waz. Was, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing fantastic. Happy to be on with you guys.

Thank you very much. We have a packed show for you guys tonight. Jank and Anna are both out, so that's why you have me and Waz tonight, but I promise it'll be a good time. Maybe. I mean, the stories are a little crazy. But with that, without further ado, since we have so many stories to get to, let's roll the tape on this first one. He is not coming back to our country. President Buckele said he was not sending him back. That's the end of the story. If he wanted to send him back, we would give him a plane ride back. There was no situation ever where he was. was going to stay in this country. None, none. He would have come back, had one extra step of paperwork, and gone back again. But he's from El Salvador, he's in El Salvador, and that's where the president plans on keeping him. So this morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled down

on Donald Trump's insistence that Kilmar Abrago Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in violation of a judge's order, will remain in a mass prison there, despite having no never committed a crime or been been convicted of a crime, but Bondi and the Trump administration are facing a fight because the federal judge in charge of Abrago Garcia's deportation case is not backing down. Yesterday, Judge Paula Zinnis scolded the administration for dragging its feet in complying with a Supreme Court order that directed the White House to quote unquote facilitate Garcia's return, telling a lawyer for the justice department. So here's what the judge actually said. She said to date, what the record shows is that nothing has been done. Nothing.

Now she's ordered an intense two-week inquiry into the Trump administration's refusal to seek his return. So this is from the New York Times, noting that every passing day was another that Abrago Garcia, a 29-year-old father of three, suffered harm in Salvadoran custody. the judge set up a fast schedule for officials to provide documents and sit for depositions. We're going to move, she said. There will be no tolerance for gamesmanship or grandstanding. There are no business hours while we do this. Cancel vacations, cancel other appointments.

I'm usually pretty good about things like that in my court, but not this time. So I expect all hands on deck. So she's not suffering any fools anymore. Her ruling means that senior Trump administration officials will, be forced to testify about their failure to take action. And it's really not so much a failure as it is just a refusal to take that action. It's willful and obstinate subordination. But in a written order granting expedited discoveries, then it said four senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State will have to sit for depositions

by April 23rd, essentially out of court interviews in which the officials will have to answer questions under oath from Abrago Garcia's lawyers. Abrago Garcia's lawyers will also be allowed to ask the government for relevant documents about the case. At this point, three courts, including the Supreme Court, have ruled the Supreme Court, by the way, was unanimous that the White House is required to take at least some steps toward freeing Abrago Garcia. But despite initially actually admitting that they had been deported, that he had been deported by mistake, the Trump administration is still falsely insisting that he is an MS-13 gang member that should have been sent back

to El Salvador. And we talked about this on yesterday's show. Those claims are incredibly misleading, and the judge recently argued that the evidence against him was completely vague and unreliable. This morning, when Pam Bondi was pressed to release whatever evidence they allegedly had, she would not share any details. Take a look. He's in a prison now in El Salvador, he was sent there. You insist, the president, everybody in the administration insists that he's MS-13. It appears that there's not going to be any sort of trial, he's not going to come back. DHS said he would be arrested and redeported if he comes back.

Why not show the American people the evidence that he's MS-13 so they can make an informed decision? Why not show the public the evidence? Well, he is an illegal alien who has been living illegally in our country. from El Salvador. ICE testified, an immigration judge ruled. He was a member of MS-13. An appellate judge ruled.

He was a member of MS-13. Hard stop, he should not be in our country. Again, that is not entirely accurate. But if you want to see all the receipts we got you, and I encourage you to go back and watch our segment from yesterday, which is linked in the description box down below was we're going to get into the vice president's response to all of this in a little bit. And it is truly, I think, unwell is the word I'm going to go with

there. But what's so baffling about this story to me is the fact that at first they sort of acknowledged their mistake. But then they were like, you know what? We just have to double down on everything because I don't know what mistakes are weakness or if they admit to have made a mistake, then it's like, obviously this is a poorly thought out and poorly executed plan that we now have to cop to. What do you think? Well, they fired the guy who came out and said we made a mistake by deporting this person. I think the only look, I don't claim, I don't know anybody in the Trump administration. I just go off of what's actually out there in a public record. And it feels like what they're doing is an attempt to have the most muscular

sort of outwardly powerful response to what I would say is literally the only mandate that the Trump administration has is that mass deportation or, you know, getting rid of a lot of the people that came to the country under the Biden administration is broadly popular. It's like a 55 to 60% approval for it. literally the only thing, the only leg they have to stand on. And they think, you know, because of that, they need to show, you know, basically a show of force that we will recklessly throw you in a freaking gulag in South America. The problem that they have is that they have no credibility here. One, we know that net deportations are flat, meaning Joe Biden was

deporting the same amount of people as the Trump administration at this at similar rates and two they don't have the goods all of these gang members all of these violent criminals all of these illegal aliens who are you know poisoning America streets and making our children and safe and you know threatened to kill our babies in their cribs they don't have a shred of evidence you know the one guy they said was an MS-13 ringleader and in Virginia. They said, oh, he was like a kingpin and coordinated this. All they got him on was a gun charge. They got the governor of Virginia to show up to this guy's trial. Basically,

he was a show pony, like, look, we got a ringleader. Nothing. They don't have a wiretap. They don't have pictures. They don't have snitches. Fellow MS-13 guys that are like, no, no, this was my boss. They have nothing. And so all they can fall back on is this double down because they've been caught with their pants down. There's just no substance here. And the crazy thing for them is that the one thing that is broadly popular about their entire hairbrained agenda, they are losing credibility on it by the day. They're sending barbers.

They're sending makeup artists. Instead of like, all right, go to the jails where these guys are in county lockup or these guys are on Rikers Island or something like that. And they're awaiting trial. And it's for violent crimes. I scoop those guys up. I bet you the country would be broadly behind. Even this crazy non-due process thing.

But they're not. They literally can't come up with these people. Yeah. And I thought it was funny also. And I mentioned this on yesterday's show. But they did have one instance recently of terrorism that was actually reported as being terrorism in the news. But that was that MAGA guy who set Governor Shapiro's house on fire in Pennsylvania.

he was charged with terrorism. So, I mean, they really just have to build this whole narrative around terrorism and gang violence because they know that if people are afraid enough, then they will support things. And they will, including things like the suspension of due process. Actually, speaking of due process, while some in the administration are now just like some people, including the vice president, they're just pretending that due process just really isn't that important or it isn't anything that needs to happen in illegal immigration cases specifically. Of course, the issue there is that you don't know if people are illegal or criminals without

that due process, but in a long diatribe on ex, vice president. President J.D. Vance wrote this. He says, to say the administration must observe due process is to beg the question, what process is due is a function of our, is a function of our resources, the public interest, the status of the accused, the proposed punishment and so many other factors. To put it in concrete terms, opposing the death penalty on an American citizen requires more legal process than deporting an illegal alien to their country of origin. Here's a useful test. Ask the people weeping over the lack of due process what precisely they propose for dealing with Biden's millions and millions of illegals. And with reasonable resource and administrative judge constraints, does their solution allow us to deport at least a few million people per year? If the answer is no, they've given away their game away. They don't want border security. They don't want us to deport the people who have come into our country illegally. they want to accomplish through fake legal process what they failed to accomplish politically

the ratification of Biden's illegal migrant invasion. President Trump and I will not stand for it. That is interesting. That entire tweet, like it was very strange. But to Waz's earlier point, it does feel like this is something that the Trump administration can really get behind and support in a way that they can't with some of their other policies right now. Right now, I know we're going to get to this later.

on in the show. So I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But some of his other policies, specifically his tariff policy, he is seeing a plunging. And he's plunging in the ratings right now. His approval rating is diminishing because of that. And because right now, things like the economy, it's harder and harder for the Trump administration to blame that on the Biden administration because everyone can see what Trump is doing to affect it directly. In this case, they still can just blame everything on the Biden administration and everybody's happy. So anyway, the Trump administration's refusal to return Abrago Garcia to the states is now landing other Republican lawmakers in very hot water. Yesterday at a town hall, attendees grilled Iowa

Senator Chuck Grassley about Trump defying the Supreme Court and it's crazy. Look at this. You're going to bring that guy back from El Salvador? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why not? That's not the column of Congress. The Supreme Court said to bring them back. Yeah. The president has that a police constitution. He's defined the Constitution. Trump don't care.

If I get an order, can't you pay for $1,200 and I just say no, does that stand up? Oh, because he's got an order from the Supreme Court and he just said no. Yeah. Screw it. I'll be able to answer your question. You ignored my letter. The president of that country is not subject to our U.S. Supreme Court.

Oh, in case, I'm pissed. In case he missed it, what he said was that the president of this country is not subject to the Supreme Court, which is literally not how our government works. It's not how our government was designed to work, nothing. So today, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen made it to El Salvador, where he was denied a meeting and a phone call with Abrago Garcia. Van Hollen and Salvador and Vice President Felix Aloha told him the government had no information connecting Abrago Garcia to MS-13, but could not accommodate a visit to the notorious Seacot prison. And here is some from Van Hollen at a press conference that he held today in El Salvador.

Well, I asked the vice president if Abrago Garcia has not committed a crime and the U.S. courts have found that he was illegally taken for the United States. And the governor, government of El Salvador has no evidence that he was part of MS-13. Why is El Salvador continuing to hold him in Sikot? And his answer was, that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador, to keep him at sea cut. All right. So in addition to that, this is reporting from the Hill. It says Van Hollen said embassy staff members informed him that they have received no directive from the Trump administration to make outreach on Abrago Garcia's behalf, despite a Supreme Court. order to facilitate his return. So was, that was a crazy response that we heard, not just from the vice president, but also from Senator Chuck Grassley. Also, I think this is also coming up later on in the show, but Jesse Waters on Fox News said that, you know, this guy was obviously MS-13 because he was obviously wearing a Chicago

Bulls hat or jersey, whichever one it was, as if like, like all of us weren't walking around wearing Chicago Bulls merge back in the 90s, right? So ultimately, this is making Republicans look really bad. We're seeing that backlash at these Republican town halls. That was a Chuck Grassley town hall. So you know that that's a very, very red district. So do you think Republicans at large are going to face any kind of backlash from their base over the Trump administration's decision not to abide by court orders? Because it really seems like it's bothering a lot of their constituents.

I think the minute that people realize that the immigration, stuff is business as usual, there's going to be a backlash. I don't think it's particularly going to be because some guys got deported that shouldn't have. I don't know that the Republican base really cares all of that much about due process for people they deem to be quote unquote illegal aliens. But I think when they do get around to noticing that there are no immigrants actually leaving the country. And I think JD kind of gives the game away. Like he, in his parlance in his statement when he says, oh, we don't have the resources, oh, we can't, bro, you guys have majorities in the Senate and the freaking Congress, okay? Why don't you pass the bill

appropriating more monies, more resources to ICE so that you guys can do your mass deportation, put more money behind it. You guys are, these guys are allocating, you know, a trillion dollar budget for the Pentagon and the military, industrial complex, they're slashing benefits like Medicare, they're doing, they're doing all kinds of stuff financially, up the ice budget. While you're at it, okay, and if this is supposed to be about these horrible, allegedly horrible illegal aliens, why are we sending six ice agents at a time to get Columbia students to deport them?

Why are we doing this to pro-student protesters of a foreign country's horrific government's actions? Why are we dedicating resources, these precious resources, to activists against the Israeli government and their regime in the Gaza Strip? It's like, these people have no leg to stand on. And the truth of the matter is, I promise you, if these guys rounded these folks up and just sent them back to El Salvador, Venezuela, people. will be like well that's what we voted for it's not what they're instead they're doing this fake

show of force they're trying to look like tough guys so they're sending them to these freaking prisons where people are getting dying all the time being beaten to death sometimes they go starving they're sending these people to concentration camps essentially instead of just doing the thing they were elected to do which is like look people do want to see deportations but they're not doing that. So again, they have to do the show pony stuff in order to seem tough. When realistically, again, go look at the deportation numbers. They're flat. Biden deported as much people as Trump did, which is insane when you really sit and think about this. I mean, so much of this is insane. Like, there's so many different aspects of this story

that it kind of, it feels like you're being gaslit and just like spoken to you like you're an idiot this whole time. And that's what our government's doing. This is coming from our elected leaders, which is, yeah, it's just like mind blowing the longer you sit in this space. And like, I know for us, we sit in, we like live in this space. I know a lot of our audience members also live in that space. It's crazy. There's so much going on right now to consider. And yeah, you're absolutely right. This feels like a very fake show of force, right? They cannot look weak. They can't back down from anything, right? To the point where they can't, instead of just admitting that one person that they deported should not have been deported, which is honestly,

it happens, right? Like sometimes things happen. Things slip through the cracks. Even if you have such a tight operation running, one mistake that's understandable, right? But as long as you, once you find out that you made that mistake, you have to rectify what you've done. But instead, they just have to double down to the point now that they're calling things like due process into question. And they're saying, you know what, look at how great these Salvadoran prisons are that we're sending all these people to. Trump said in an interview that they're great. They're a lot of fun. It's a really nice place to be. People want to be in these prisons. These prisons have been flagged by international human rights organizations for human rights violations. Several to for years. This is nothing new. So that's

where we're sending our people, whether they're supposed to be there and like no one's supposed to be in a prison camp. But anyway, we're going to get to our first break. And we have a lot more on the other side. We're back. Welcome back to the show. You have Yaz and was here tonight in for Jenkin Anna, but we have a lot more show to get to. So let's get right into this next story. The Pentagon's Defense Digital Service, or DD, has shut itself down effective at the end of this month.

The DDS has been referred to as the Pentagon's very own SWAT team of nerds, which is fun. Before we get into why the DDS has decided to call it quits, here's some quick background information on what exactly they do or what they did, really. The Defense Digital Service was created in 2015 to help the Pentagon adopt fast tech fixes during national security crises and push Silicon Valley style in a innovation inside the Pentagon. It built rapid response tools for the military during the Afghanistan withdrawal, databases to transfer Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid, drone detection technologies, and more. Without the program, some key efforts to streamline the DOD's tech talent pipeline and counter

adversarial drones will be sunset, one soon to be former employee said. So it sounds, you know, these people, they sound exactly like the kind of people that someone like Elon Musk would want to actually keep around. In fact, the only reason why this hasn't happened sooner is because the members assumed that they would eventually be called upon to aid Musk in his efforts to streamline government operations, integrate AI into government systems, and overall just help the government to run more efficiently. Jennifer Hay, the DDS director said simply, the reason we stuck it out so long as we have is that we thought we were going to be called in. However, they soon realized

that Doge was really just trying to cut them off and shut them down. And so seeing the writing on the wall, all 14 DDS members, including the director, have chosen to resign with 11 employees opting to take Trump's deferred resignation package. On the collective decision to resign, Hey, explained, the best way to put it, I think, is either we die quickly. or we die slowly, which is very morbid, but you know, it is what it is. That is the state of the world these days. So as for the disappointing realization that Doge isn't all it claims to be, one former DDS official echoed sentiments that I know we've been expressing here for a while on TYT.

They said they're not really using AI. They're not really driving efficiency. What they're doing is smashing everything. Yes, we know. So to that point, this isn't the only tech or is. efficiency-minded department that Doge has targeted. According to Politico, several other digital modernization efforts within the government have met similar fates.

The U.S. Digital Service, which helped the government modernize its technology and attract tech talent, has now been subsumed by Doge amid mass layoffs and firings. A program called 18F, a technology unit within the GSA was eliminated by Doge as well. As for the DDS functions, what they were actually doing there at the Pentagon, they're reported to be absorbed by the chief digital and artificial intelligence office, which is the broader department that the DDS fell under. So this is very, very sad because almost all the people who at least spoke to Politico, what they said is that, you know, they would not have quit their jobs. They wouldn't have left their jobs unless they felt the pressure from Doge to do so. And so they succumb to the pressure because, as they said, it was going to happen now on their terms or it was going to happen later on Doge's terms. So it feels good to have a little bit of power, I guess, wherever you can find it, just take it.

But it's really sad to see, though, what's happening here. And this particular department, I think, is worth talking about because they're exactly the kind of department that Doge says they want to be in cahoots with, right? They were doing the type of things that Doge says they want to do. And so in eliminating this department or pressuring them to quit, they're really just going against their own directive. What do you think? Obviously, I echo your sentiments. There just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the Doge cuts. Like, I get it.

Elon went into Twitter. He fired like 80% of the staff. People said Twitter would never be able to function that way. And Twitter mostly, I mean, it sucks as an experience, but it mostly does work still, right? And so Elon can be like, oh, you idiots told me not to fire all of these people. And guess what? I fired them and Twitter still works. Okay, cool.

The government doesn't work that way, okay? You fire a bunch of air traffic controllers. People will die. You know, Twitter doesn't work for a day. Okay, I can't get off some snazzy tweets for a few hours. Life goes on. You fire a bunch of government employees that are literally keeping the metaphorical trains running on time. There will be tangible problems in American citizens' lives.

The DoD is no different. And this segment that was doing a lot of, you know, kind of cybersecurity kind of stuff, again, no different. This is like the idea would be to be making these guys more efficient at their jobs, more effective at what they're tasked. do, not to like get them out of there, but this is sort of in line with the entire administration so far. You take the kernel of something that broadly, I think most Americans would support, just the idea that, you know, the government might have some bloat. Like DOD itself, we might be buying, you know, a surplus of weapons from some weapons manufacturer. We might be, you know, some contractor is overbilling us for some thing that they're doing for us.

Americans will broadly agree that the government has some bloat, we should probably cut it. They take that scintilla, that little kernel of truth, and do something completely ridiculous, stupid, haphazard, and anti-productive, or counterproductive. Excuse me, same with immigration. I myself am a first-gen American, my parents, all the people who raised me are immigrants. I can understand people in the last four years, 10 million new immigrants under Biden, border towns in Texas and Arizona, places like Chicago and New York, feeling like they're bit overrun and overwhelmed. They don't have the capacity of resources to help these people get adjusted in American

life, being like, oh, maybe we kind of went overboard with the immigration stuff. We should probably send some people back. Again, that's not my opinion, but I can see somebody reasonably coming to that conclusion. And the Trump administration would be like, all right, we're going to run with that. Instead of just being like, all right, we're going to do more border security, people who don't have a legitimate process as many of these solemn seekers or whatever who don't have a legitimate claim, all right, sorry guys, you gotta go back to your country instead. No.

Let's send these people with no due process to concentration camps and make a big show of it. You know, and on and on we go with the tariffs. You can say, you know what, these trade deals from the 90s and the 70s, they screwed American workers. We want to bring manufacturing work back to America. In fact, we need the capacity to manufacture stuff, especially high-tech goods. If we ever get into an actual beef with somewhere like China, all right, we need this stuff. Instead, we get this blunt force instrument of tariffs across the board, no precision. They don't take a scalpel, they take a freaking sled chamber to everything.

And I hate to be this cliche anti-Trump administration person. and call them stupid, call Republicans dumb. Oh, we're the smart side, we're the brainy side. I kind of like scoff at that notion a lot of times when liberals are leftists, take that tact towards the right. But I'm sorry, this is dumb. And when it's not dumb, it's completely cruel. Like this, this is no charitable way to look at any of this stuff.

Yeah, it's hard to not call it dumb when actual experts, economists are also calling this dumb. And conservative economists, conservative lawyers, conservative commentators. It's like, guys, I want to run with Trump on this, I don't, there's nothing there. There's no sense. And we all saw that chart. And we had analysts look at the chart, they're like, where do they come up with these numbers? And also the numbers that they came up with, like just to get those numbers for one country

would have taken so much research and so much data analysis. And then they're like, oh, here it is for like 200 different countries and we just did it. That's not how it works. But actually, Wazi, did touch on something interesting. That's how cults work, you know, when they take some kind of universal truth or some sentiment that no one would argue against something like, you know, we don't want our children to get trafficked. Obviously, who's going to argue with that?

Or you say things like, we don't want the government to run inefficiently. Like obviously, nobody wants their tax dollars to be spent in a dumb way. That's all that our democracy is really built on. That's why we have two parties. We say, I like how that party is going to spend my tax dollars versus how this party is going to spend my tax dollars. But then they take that and they say, you know what? If you don't support everything we're doing, then you obviously love inefficient government, which is crazy. And everybody knows it's crazy except for the people who fall for it.

And that's the people who are in this, you know, de facto cult. Well, I'm being nice when I say that. And it all just feels very inefficient too, which is the irony of all of this. In this particular case, they're firing the people at the DD, or they're pressuring them to quit, right? These are the people who are doing real good, tangible work, people who are actually doing things to help the government run more efficiently. And they're helping to integrate AI into the government. How does getting rid of those people make the government work more efficiently? Also, just in general, even if that wasn't their specific role, how does getting rid of more people help the government to run more efficiently?

You're making more people do more work that they don't know how to do. That's just going to slow everything down. But you kind of touch on this too. The government is not a business. And I keep saying you're not supposed to run a government like a business because the goals are not the same. With a business, yeah, efficiency is king, right? You want to maximize your profits and you want to cut your costs as much as possible. Like, nothing else really matters when it comes to a business.

But with a government, you have to consider the people. You are governing people. You're not running a business. You're not managing money. That's a part of it, but it really is not the whole picture. I do want to get on to this next story. So let's roll the tape on this one. Some good news.

Independence feel that Donald Trump has vacated the center of the electric catering to his base. What are we talking about? Well, let's talk about the overall net approval ratings. We're going to look at the worst ever at this point in a presidency. The old record among independence for the world. was Donald Trump back in 2016, a net approval rating of minus 16 points. While Donald Trump has broken his own record here, he now holds in this particular term, the worst ever net approval rating at this point in a presidency among independents.

I get this, minus 22 points. I like this guy, I like his energy, I like the way he talks. But the numbers get even worse for Trump when you focus on the number one issue, the economy Take a look. Let's take a look at Trump's Net Approval rating on it and look at the trend line over just the last few months. You go back to January, he was slightly above water month with independence at plus one point. Look at this drop K, oh my, minus 29 points.

That's a 30 point drop in under three months of time. You go back through the record books, I simply put Cape Baldwin, can't find anything close to this. This is such a record that there is no historical analogy to be 29 points underwater on the most important issue of the day with independence. This right here, my dear friends, is political poison. Oh my God, no historical analogy, political poison. What is behind these shockingly low numbers?

You probably won't be surprised to find out that it is Trump's tariffs. They are a huge factor in all of this because as I mentioned in the earlier story, there's no one else to blame but Trump for this one. So here's more from Enton. A clear plan for tariffs and trade among independents. Look at this, 57% say no. He doesn't even have a clear plan for what he should be doing with tariffs and trade. And when asked whether or not they like the idea of additional tariffs, guess what percentage of independents say no that they oppose it? It is two thirds. It is 66% of independents who opposed new They don't like anything that's coming out of Donald Trump's right now.

Absent, maybe immigration, but when it comes to the economy, when it comes to overall, when it comes to tariff, it's a threesome for negativity among independents. They oppose, oppose, oppose. All right, so those numbers might look bad for Donald Trump. But today, Enten actually reported on some good news for the president. So let's watch that. I hear all these stories, all these articles, all those All the Trump voters, they regret what they did back in 2024.

I'm here to tell you, uh-uh, very few of them regret what they did back in 2024. What are we talking about? Trump voters looking back at 2024, we got a new poll out. The poll was conducted this month. What percentage would change their vote to a different candidate? We're talking just 2%, just 2%. That's not even a wide spot on the road. And then you ask, okay, the same question of Kamala Harris voters, and it turns out the numbers are rather similar.

So if there was a repeat, if folks got to be able to redo their vote that they had back in 2024, would the result be any different? I doubt it would be. Well, in February of 2017, 4%, 4% of Trump voters say they'd shift their vote. That's actually slightly more than the 3% this time around. Was, I think on the left, we want to hear that these Trump people, like we want to believe that these Trump people are finally seeing the error of their ways. And we are seeing some stories like that coming out on social media, TikTok, on X, wherever.

But on the whole, Trump supporters still very much support Trump. They still believe that he's going to pull out a win at the end of this, right? Sometimes in our leftist bubble, sometimes it can seem like that's not the case. But the reality is that it's very, very hard, especially at this point, the way politics is so polarized in this country, it is very rare to see somebody completely switch parties or completely switch ideologies. And also there's, you know, the sunk cost fallacy that these people have invested so much of their time and energy, their entire personalities into supporting Trump. That is a huge ask for people on the left to be like, can you just switch over?

Like, do you finally get it? Do you think that there ever will be a mass exodus of people from supporting Trump to not supporting Trump? Or do you think that like the left just needs to let go of that hope and move on and try to figure something else out? I think there's a couple, a few things at work here. Donald Trump is a singular figure in the sense that people, many of the people that vote for him, just like him personally. They don't care about what the policy is or how he's going to get there. They like, they just think he has a compelling personality. It is a cult of personality.

And so again, folks got to remember Biden's like fortunes didn't turn until nine months into his presidency after the Iraq, excuse me, the Afghanistan war pullout, which obviously all of us supported. But it did tank this. He got killed in the media for this. And it kind of never turned around for us. It's been basically three months of Donald Trump. It's very, very, very early in the game. Another thing that people have to realize, as much as we've like everybody, experts, lay people, normal people, people with 401ks, people with, you know, stock portfolios, etc., etc. As much as, you know, everybody can recognize that these policy ideas, especially as it pertains the tariffs in the economy are disastrous, the results haven't kicked in yet. We haven't had

mass layoffs yet. We haven't had a stock market nose dot. We haven't had tangible, okay, material effects of Trump's dumbheadedness yet. And so to expect people to feel like, oh, this guy's been a disaster when nothing's tangibly happened yet, you know, no government agency that Doge has cut funding to fail somebody, you know, yet. Like this stuff hasn't happened yet. You know, there hasn't been some environmental disaster where the EPA could have stepped in and they didn't, you know, or some kind of basically government oversight that wasn't in place because of Doge or people's stock portfolio and retirements get tanked.

This stuff hasn't happened yet. And so I do think it's pretty early. And I think another example to think about is George W. Bush in 2004, 2005, after destroying John Kerry. Okay, he got reelected, Republicans descended in both houses of Congress. And it just looked like, wow, we're gonna be Republican from now until kingdom come. And then what happened? Disastrous war in Iraq, okay?

Bush got cocky talking about privatizing Social Security. which obviously is a no-no, got creamed for it, Katrina response, disaster, and then on and on and on and went until by the time Barack Obama and the Dems run against the Republicans in 2008, like George Bush is widely seen as the worst president ever, okay? This like he went from literally feeling like the Republicans were going to have majorities forever to this guy is a disaster to the point that we elected the first, Negro in the history of the country. Okay, so folks need to realize that it's very early.

A lot of the horrible nature of Trump's policies have yet to be felt by everyday people. But believe me, if this guy keeps it going with this China trade war, if he keeps it going with this hairbrained, disgustingly evil immigration policy, like, if he keeps it going down this way, it's going to have an effect. I promise you. Yeah, you know, I agree, but it is interesting because Trump supporters, they won't believe that bad things are happening until it happens to them directly sometimes, right? They don't think that the economy tanking is a problem because their portfolios haven't been hit or their bank accounts or whatever, but they will believe that terrorists are just running rampant around the country,

even though there hasn't been any reported terrorism, even though they haven't seen any terrorist or even though they haven't been personally terrorized by anyone, really. So it really, like they just pick and choose things. And the reason why they do it is because, you know, like you said, it is a cult of Trump's personality, right? They have to support him. We're even seeing it from members of Congress, right? Where they come out not to defend democracy, not to defend the country, not to defend

their constituents, but to defend the president. That's not how this country is supposed to work. And the Republicans, they do need to seriously start thinking about what's going to happen if and when this guy is out of there because presumably he'll be out of there within the next four years. I guess we'll see what happens there. But anyway, we do need to take our next break. So we will be right back. Welcome back to the show. You have Yaz and Woz in tonight without Jenk and Anna. They're not here tonight. But let's get into this next story. New data coming out from the from the US government yesterday that showed a 10% drop in March of non-citizens arriving at US airports. And it won't surprise you probably to know that the biggest year over year declines were from Canadians, people flying in from Mexico,

Mexico and from Europe. All right, so as part of the fallout from Trump's tariffs, as well as his incessant provocation of the Canadian people, i.e., his threats to annex them. And his accusations that they're funneling fentanyl into our country, et cetera, et cetera, travel into the U.S. from foreign countries, specifically Canada, Mexico, and Europe is down in a very big way. So big in fact that, according to experts, the U.S. economy is expected to lose billions of dollars in 20, and lost revenue from tourism and boycotts of American products. Last month, arrivals of non-citizens into the U.S. by plane dropped by almost 10%. Also, Goldman Sachs has estimated that in the worst case scenario, accounting for both travel and purchasing boycotts, the U.S. could see a total hit of 0.3% to gross domestic product, which translates into a whopping $90 billion loss.

So 0.3% doesn't sound like a lot, but it's $90 billion. According to the international trade administration or the ITA, the U.S. took in a record $254 billion last year from international travelers. And prior to all of this Trump drama that we're experiencing right now, projections for 2025 and 2025 and 26 were expected to meet and then exceed pre-pandemic levels of travel from non-citizens. And we're already starting to see the effects starting to play out. In March, hotel rates and airfares and car rental costs, those all dropped. And the Northeast was hit particularly hard, presumably because Canadians aren't visiting that region anymore. So looking ahead to this summer, Canadian flight reservations to the U.S. are down 70% through September compared to the same period last year. And Europe to U.S. bookings are down 25%.

Reports of longer wait times at customs and immigration, as well as stories of detentions like harsh detentions of European travelers in American airports could also be contributing to these declining air sales. And business travel also looks to be impacted. It's not just pleasure travel. So let's look at that. But we've also recently seen moves in corporate travel start to show up. We reported last night and yesterday, afternoon that AIMCO, the Alberta Pension Fund, is told that staff that it will be curbing trips to the U.S. They'll be able to go for some reasons, but not for conferences and speaking engagements. And last night we reported that the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, a pretty major research hospital in Canada, as advised the staff not to go to the U.S. and has given them all sorts of advice about what to do if they do have to go to the U.S.

in terms of like, you know, cleaning up their laptop and taking a, you know, a burner phone that doesn't have your personal data on it. It's somewhat hard to believe we're talking about this in the realm of Canadian U.S. travel, but that's where we are. And as long as people remain concerned, it's likely these numbers are going to be solved. Well, I think this is really sad. I love Canada. I love visiting Canada. I go to Canada a lot, actually, because I have a lot of family there. And, Waz, I'm originally from Connecticut. And so when I was younger, we used to just drive up to Toronto all the time.

I've seen Niagara Falls so many times, like more times than anyone needs to see this one particular waterfall, but I've been to Niagara Falls so many times. And it is sad, but I can't say that I blame the Canadians for not wanting to come to the United States anymore. The reasons as to why all this is happening is very obvious. But was, do you think that Trump considered that this might happen, that this might be like a sign effect when he was rolling out all these tariffs and bullying other countries? especially when he was antagonizing the Canadians, like they're, they're right there.

Why would you be so mean to them? And it's such a beautiful country too. Or do you think this is just part of like the short term pain before we get to see the long term game that he keeps promising us? No, he didn't consider it. And no, nobody on his team pushed back. Stephen Miller is in charge of his immigration regime, right? Like this guy is a maximalist, you know, anti-immigration person. So no, nobody brought this to attention.

And I don't think Trump actually gives a damn about any of this. I think he does have some level of racial resentment, anti-immigration, like an instinct for that. But I don't think he cares about this stuff as much as he does the tariffs. Like, he's been talking about tariffs for 40 years, literally since the 80s. Back then he was complaining about the Japanese allegedly ripping us off because Americans prefer Toyota and Honda to freaking, I don't know, Saturn or whatever, right? And so I don't think anybody told them this. And as far as like Canadians and Mexicans, okay, first of all, Canada like our country is a very multicultural country. If you find out that these idiots are just grabbing people off the street who might be Palestinian or who might vaguely be Middle Eastern and against or be accused of being anti the Israeli.

government's regime in the Gaza Strip, and you could get snatched up, putting some freaking holding cell, and be treated like some damn criminal, why the hell would you come to America? Now, if you're a white bread, you probably got nothing to worry about, but at the same time, like again, Canada is a very multicultural and diverse country. Same for Mexico. These are brown people. They're rounding up Venezuela. Venezuelans and El Salvadorians and Mexicans, okay, they're rounding up people that they identify as vaguely Hispanic or Latin and just what if you get mistaken for Salvadorian and you're Mexican and they send you to literally a gulag where dudes are beating you up and

starving you to death. Why the hell would you voluntarily come up here to vacation at that To have fun. Now, there are people, you know, that risk in their lives, their safety to come up here, make money for their family and stuff like that. And you understand why they're making a certain kind of sacrifice. Did I freeze for you guys? Yeah, you did. All right. So we'll get back to Wasen a little bit. But yeah, to Waaz's point, it is very dangerous to travel to this country now. And a lot, there's been a lot of reports specifically for international travelers coming from Europe, from France and Germany.

who said that they've been harassed in American airports. Who wants to deal with that? Who doesn't have to deal with it? And also, you know, I would say that I don't think Trump really consider the loss of international tourist money as much as he probably should have. Because I feel like, you know, he's so arrogant that he's like, well, of course they'll come. Of course they'll still want to come here. This is the greatest country in the world.

So anyway, Waz, are you back? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. Do you want to finish your thought? No way. Yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, as a Haitian American, if they were rounding up a bunch of Jamaicans, even if I'm not Jamaican, I'd be like, damn, I'm pretty adjacent to that. Like, I would not be coming to this country.

Like, straight up, if you're a Mexican person and you're not coming here to make money, you're coming here to spend money in our economy, enjoy yourself, vacation, sightsee, enjoy some of the beautiful things our great country has to offer. You hear they rounded up Salvadorians, rounding of Venezuelans, no due process, treating any as if they're hard in criminals. Hell no. I'm staying my ass where I'm at. Sorry.

Yeah, no, I definitely get that. I mean, I'm a brown woman. My family, like, see, like, it's weird, you know, because, like, I was born in Connecticut. My family's from Guyana and South America, you know, so it's like I'm not Middle Eastern. I'm not anything that, like,

would turn up on a terrorist watch list, but I look like what I look like, because I'm into, you know. Hey, man, keep your papers close. You close enough. Like, these racist people, like, they're not the most, like, geographically, historically, intelligently intelligent also in my own experience, you know? If you're going to be racist, like, you're probably just like, you don't know what you're talking about.

So anyway, on that note, on that pleasant note, we're going to wrap up this first hour. I think you have, who do you have, John and Brett in the next hour? So that'll be fun for you guys. All right. So we'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.